Mike, Woody and others--
While I agree with everything you guys say, and believe me, I appreciate the guidance, I personally find it extremely difficult to replicate to the T what you are recommending me to do. I'm equating it to stopping on a dime. Not an easy task. After all if I could possibly do those things, I'd be a professional and probably not needing of advice. Not making excuses, just seeing it for what it is. So what I will try to do is incorporate your rules and strategies one by one, a little at a time so as not to get too overwhelmed. Tomorrow I will concentrate on targets for both exits and entries. We will see how it goes.
I know the advice I'm getting is extremely valuable and I'm trying my best not to squander it. The last few times I tried to change something, I got my legs whacked out from under me so I'm a little jittery.
The more I think about it, the more I feel exits and entries are intrinsically inter-twined with no one more or less important than the other. I think where the exit gets the high regard is in the fact that people lose more actual money in blowing their stops then blowing their entry OR getting stopped out regularly because of a bad entry. Nobody seems to talk about how much money is left on the table on a bad entry (not necessarily stopping out) OR how much money was made because of a good entry that never banged your stop. I don't know. Never really thought about that much until after all this talk about stops. Yes stops are tricky but so are entries.
It's late and I'm rambling so goodnight 'till tomorrow.
trading